Certainly the future of oil and gas exploitation is in the hands of digital technologies, as oil industries feel pressured by some regulators that are part of this stage that we can categorize as energy transition, some investors who are part of this energy transition have said that digitization may end up being an essential element for oil companies to use digitization as their most faithful strategy in order to continue exploiting oil and gas.
In the oil industry there are very risky operations that demand a lot of security, apart from that are operations that also demand a high cost, which is why digital technologies can become a new innovative way that can reduce operational costs, they can also reduce the risks by accident, and finally they can also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as operations may be more under control.
The strategy of oil companies should be to generate effective partnerships with companies that provide digital services such as cloud computing, all with the intention of even being able to provide services to other oil companies.
The future importance lies in the exploitation of oil and gas will demand a lot of savings and optimization of both human and financial resources, and it is well known that with conventional processes it is very difficult to achieve these goals, so that digitization technology can achieve the desired optimization.
Are you talking, here, about the use of robotics to make the production of these resources quicker and smoother, or are you thinking more in regard to how digital tech can be used to assist people in the operation of the machinery used?
There are a lot of interesting implications to what you have written here, and while on the human side of things, jobs are likely to be lost, there will be a number of jobs created on the tech side of things - developers, designers, coders, etc.
How much technology is currently used in these types of operations? I would've thought it would be quite a bit, especially where technology can assist in safety requirements.
Certainly robotics benefits from digitization, for example: on the floor of a drilling rig the driller can operate in an automated fashion and activate a hydraulic wrench to screw in or unscrew a drill pipe.
Also oil and gas production can be optimized, as the operational process improves with automation, thus the construction of oil wells will be better and so will future production.
No jobs are lost, as the personnel could be trained to handle the digitization, and the workers who do not operate in digitization can be sent to other labor-intensive jobs, on a drilling rig there is a lot of work, so I do not think jobs will be lost.
The digitization technology is already in use in well drilling, however it is something that is still under development and has a long way to go.
I hope I have clarified your questions, greetings and thank you for sharing your valuable comment.